


Lightly Falls the Mist

by Dracoduceus



Series: Always Close to You [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: BACK ON MY BULLSHIT, Discussion of Death, Ghosts, M/M, discussion of time travel shenanigans, mind the tags please
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-23
Updated: 2019-07-23
Packaged: 2020-07-11 20:56:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19934365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dracoduceus/pseuds/Dracoduceus
Summary: A continuation of"Always Close to You".--“Are there no other ghosts here?” McCree wondered.Hanzo shrugged and pulled away to look around as well. “I saw two other burials here but I haven’t seen any of their spirits linger. Presumably they were fed up with this world and wanted to leave.”Thinking back to the rows of urns in the forgotten graveyard, McCree nodded. He couldn’t blame them.





	Lightly Falls the Mist

**Author's Note:**

> Written entirely out of self-indulgence. 
> 
> The title comes from the same song that inspired the title for [Always Close to You](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18752077/chapters/44483698), a song I heard often growing up called [Pili Mau Me 'Oe](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgOxbbMszmw), specifically the lines:
>
>> Lightly falls the mist on your skin  
> It reminds me of when love first began to grow  
> I hold this dear to my heart, my affections  
> I long to be close to you

When McCree died, he almost didn’t know it.

By then he had grown numb, his extremities cold with blood loss. He was in shock, his entire body tingling and then, with Hanzo’s voice in his ear,  _ hold on, hold on, I love you, I’m sorry, hold on _ , McCree died.

Or so he assumed. He wasn’t really sure exactly when it happened, just that it did.

He “woke up” on the gurney, sitting up and looking down at his body, covered in a sheet, splattered with blood that moved along the off-white threads by capillary action as if alive. His hat was there too, tucked beneath the sheet as if to keep him company.

“Well,” he said to his body. “It’s been real. Didn’t think I’d be able to do this. Thought when you’re dead…you’re dead.” He sighed, running his hand through his hair and was surprised to find that his hat was still there.

When he pulled it off his head, he found that it looked just as worn as he remembered, scuffed and well-loved. Sighing, he put it back on his head and looked around. Hanzo was nowhere to be found and those few people he  _ did _ see were grim-faced.

A creature appeared in front of him. At first it looked like a strange glowing worm but then the edges solidified into a definite shape: a dragon.

It didn’t speak but it didn’t need to because McCree inexplicably  _ knew _ what it would say.  _ I will take you to my young master _ .

McCree bowed and when he straightened, he wasn’t in the drop ship.

He was near the entrance of the Blackwatch graveyard. The waves roared and hissed like dragons themselves.

The dragon, one of Hanzo’s spirits, was nowhere to be seen but McCree didn’t need it to lead him down the familiar pathways. When he emerged from the narrow tunnel, the graveyard seemed brighter.

Maybe it was because of the man that sat at the very edge, his legs hanging over the rock wall as he looked out to sea. He turned and stood quickly when he saw McCree.

“You  _ fool _ ,” he hissed, shoving McCree in the chest. “This life I give you and still you die!” his eyes were filled with tears. “Oh, Jess.”

McCree tugged him close. “Can I…?”

“I’m still the Hanzo you knew,” his lover said tartly. “Kiss me, you idiot.”

Laughing, McCree obeyed and Hanzo’s lips tasted like tears. Like salt spray and sunlight and an eternity of peace.

“You knew,” Hanzo said softly when they parted. “You knew it was me and yet you let me tend my own grave.” He sounded amused though his lashes were still wet and his smile was shaky.

McCree laughed awkwardly. “I couldn’t exactly stop you,” he pointed out. “And…well, you deserve some self-care, don’t you think?” he yelped when Hanzo pinched him and then laughed. “Aren’t you proud of me?”

By some preternatural ability, Hanzo seemed to understand what he was trying to say. “I am,” he assured McCree. “Although I feel like some lecherous old man for watching you grow up and now wanting to kiss you.”

“Hey,” McCree protested. “I was still legal when you knew me!”

“Were you?” Hanzo asked dryly.

McCree grinned. “Besides,” he purred, tugging Hanzo closer and kissing him gently. “I guess this means that I get to call you ‘daddy’—ow!”

“What I don’t understand,” Hanzo said as if he hadn’t pinched McCree. “Is why.”

“Why what?”

Hanzo frowned. “You know why—you  _ knew _ . Why did you…” he shook his head. “This is all so confusing.”

“I tried to keep the timeline as much as possible,” McCree said softly. “I had so many nights where I wasn’t sure that I was doing the right thing because I didn’t know what was right or wrong. But I just remember looking at you when you first arrived at the Watchpoint and thinking ‘there is the man that saved my life’.”

Hanzo’s breath hitched and he opened his mouth to say something but McCree continued quickly.

“I thought, ‘I can’t be mean to him but I can’t thank him either’. And then Lena went and did what I couldn’t do. I had heard so long about how proud you were and I just thought to myself ‘well, you were grieving when I knew you so that’s why’…” he shook his head. “But you didn’t say anything—you took the beating and I couldn’t just…I couldn’t just sit there.”

Hanzo buried his face in McCree’s chest. “It made me love you,” Hanzo said softly. “Because you stayed who you were and you saw…you saw something in me that I couldn’t, that I didn’t know existed.” 

McCree looked around. “Are we ghosts?”

“To an extent,” Hanzo said vaguely.

“Are there no other ghosts here?” McCree wondered.

Hanzo shrugged and pulled away to look around as well. “I saw two other burials here but I haven’t seen any of their spirits linger. Presumably they were fed up with this world and wanted to leave.”

Thinking back to the rows of urns in the forgotten graveyard, McCree nodded. He couldn’t blame them. “What about Nox?”

“He is still here,” Hanzo said dryly. “He is still ‘living’. As far as I can tell, he doesn’t know that we’re here.” He sounded vaguely guilty at that and McCree tugged Hanzo close again. Hanzo seemed all too happy to be tugged around and sighed. “I missed this.”

“I’m sorry it took so long,” McCree murmured.

Hanzo sighed. “I wish that it had taken longer. I wish that you had lived a full life and died in your sleep.”

“Then none of this would have happened,” McCree pointed out. “You would not have been so ready to give up your heart. Which…” he made a face. “I’m sorry.”

Pulling back, Hanzo frowned up at him. “Why are you apologizing?” he demanded.

“For…” McCree made a face. “Well, this whole thing was because you loved me, and you couldn’t live without me? So…I’m sorry for making you fall in love with me.”

Hanzo barked a rough laugh. “I did it because you were young,” he said. “And because I was dying anyway, remember? Or maybe you didn’t know.” He lifted a hand reflexively to his stomach and for a brief moment McCree could see blood there before it was gone. “I was shot, badly, during that attack on the Watchpoint. Dr. Ziegler’s healing stream was in its infant stages and a gut shot was still one of the ways that you could die, even with biotics. All it did was ease my pain and let me live just long enough to speak to Reyes.”

The mention of his old mentor made McCree stiffen. “What did you talk to him about?”

“You know some of it, because you had your part in this, I suspect,” Hanzo said dryly. “But I made him promise me, swear on what part of him would never decay, that he would wake Genji at the right time.”

McCree stiffened. “Can you trust him with that?”

“I knew that you’d die,” Hanzo pointed out. “Or you would if your life followed the same course as the one I lived through. You would not know that we had gone back in time, only in your memories of the event when you were in Blackwatch.” He sighed. “Time will tell if we can truly trust him but…I think we can.”

Shaking his head, McCree pulled Hanzo close and kissed him. “Let’s not think about that.”

“Good,” Hanzo grunted. “Because I’ve missed you.”

After a few moments McCree pulled back. “Wait. We’re ghosts, right?”

Hanzo gave him a sour look. “Ghosts or spirits. Why?”

“Can ghosts or spirits have sex?” he wondered. Then he grinned. “Can we be poltergeists?”

Rolling his eyes, Hanzo walked away. “I don’t know what I expected,” he grumbled and moved to sit down on the rock wall at the edge of the graveyard again.

“Sorry babe,” McCree said apologetically and came up behind him, wrapping his arms around Hanzo and resting his chin on his head. “It’s just…a lot to take in.”

Hanzo sighed. “I know,” he said ruefully. “I’ve had many years to adjust, but you?” he sighed again.

“Come here,” McCree murmured and tugged Hanzo into his lap. He looked up at Hanzo once he was situated and sighed. “I think this is a good retirement, huh?”

Hanzo’s lips twitched as if he tried to hold back a smile. It broke through and Hanzo laughed. “Jesse,” he breathed. “We’re  _ dead _ .”

“Yup,” McCree said, running his thumbs over Hanzo’s hips. “So that means that we don’t gotta worry about waking up early, or doing chore rotations.”

Looping his arms around McCree, Hanzo laughed. “Those are your priorities?”

“Mmhmm,” McCree hummed. “No more bum knee or phantom pains. No more hearing Hana streaming late at night or getting scolded by Ange or Ana for smelling like smoke. I think I might like this.” he sighed. “An eternity with you is not so bad a thing.”

They fell into silence broken only by the pounding surf and the hiss of the receding waves.

“Why did you do it?” Hanzo asked at last, lifting a hand to cup McCree’s cheek.

“Do what?”

Hanzo hummed. “Why did you talk to me? Why were you so friendly to me? When I last saw you, you wanted nothing to do with me.”

For a while McCree didn’t know what to say but Hanzo didn’t press him for an answer. He marveled that to Hanzo, the last time they had spoken was when McCree was in Blackwatch; to McCree they had been on a mission.

They had been talking about retirement.

They had kissed and promised to see each other later—a promise kept only through their deaths.

“I thought about it over the years,” McCree admitted. “I couldn’t understand why you did it and I couldn’t help but feel guilty. They told me that you had  _ insisted _ ; that you weren’t just a casual organ donor that happened to match—you had told them to give me your heart and I couldn’t understand why. When I saw you, I realized that our time had not come yet— _ your _ time had not come and I wanted to know. I needed that closure.” He sighed. “I wanted to know who you are, to know why you would sacrifice yourself for someone you hardly knew. Even though you may have known the ‘me’ from your time, you wouldn’t have known Blackwatch-me. So, I needed to know.” His voice hitched.

“So you got to know me,” Hanzo finished and pressed his forehead to McCree’s. “And started the cycle.”

McCree nodded wordlessly. Then he laughed and his voice cracked when he said, “And now I’ve kept you waiting for so long.”

“I got tired of the silence after a few months,” Hanzo admitted. “But whoever thought of these graveyards had the right idea. The sunsets here are lovely.”

“Can you leave the graveyard?”

“I haven’t seen a need to,” Hanzo replied. “Not since Recall happened. There was no point in walking among the living.”

_ Not when I might see you _ , Hanzo didn’t say.

McCree eased Hanzo off of his lap and moved to his grave and the empty space next to it. “Do you think they’ll bury us together?”

“I don’t know,” Hanzo admitted. “I don’t know what you requested in your forms.”

“I think I updated them,” McCree said thoughtfully. “What happens if I’m not?”

Hanzo shrugged. “I don’t know the rules of this place,” he said dryly. “Or the rules of being a ghost. Considering that I am not bound here, I doubt it would make much of an issue.”

“It doesn’t matter,” McCree decided and smiled at Hanzo. “I will always find a way to come back to you.” Standing, Hanzo moved back to McCree and kissed him.

* * *

The waves hissed and roared, almost drowning out the eulogies given over their graves.

“Do you think any of them can hear us?” McCree whispered.

“I haven’t seen any evidence for or against it,” Hanzo replied. “Be quiet for your own funeral.”

McCree snorted. “This is too sad for my tastes,” he complained. “They should’a livened it up a bit.”

He flinched back at Hanzo’s glare. A spark of white-edged blue crackled across his eyes. “A funeral is not for the dead,” he said stiffly. “It is to honor them, yes, but a funeral is for the  _ living _ . The dead have gone—this is for those that we left behind to say goodbye.”

“But it ain’t goodbye,” McCree pointed out. “We’re still here.”

“They don’t know that,” Hanzo replied and turned back as the Reaper said a prayer in Spanish. To McCree’s surprise, though Hanzo had shown no evidence of religious affiliation, he still crossed himself piously when the Reaper did.

McCree caught Hanzo’s hands and tugged him close for a soft kiss. “Hey,” he said. “I ain’t livin’ no more but you still have me. Like marriage, only for forever.” 

He was rewarded with a soft smile and a kiss to his chin and then his lips. Behind them, the funeral continued, oblivious to their presence. “Forever sounds nice.”

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed my self-indulgent bullshit haha. I love this story so much that I couldn't resist giving them a happy ending of sorts. 
> 
> You can also find me on twitter at [dracoduceus](https://twitter.com/dracoduceus). Lately I've been trying to post there more often. Things like updates to fics, information on where and when I post stories, etc. 
> 
> Feel free to come and yell at me there, as I'm almost never on tumblr anymore. 
> 
> ~DC


End file.
